


Dedication

by withcoffeespoons



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 17:33:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2159169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withcoffeespoons/pseuds/withcoffeespoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were times when Todd thought he'd dreamt Neil up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dedication

There were times when Todd thought he'd dreamt Neil up. That Neil was a figment of his imagination, so perfectly tailored to be remarkable, passionate, inspiring. But he never could be. He was so solidly present in Todd's memory, the ghost of his companionable touch like the familiarity of home. His smile alone was a complexity that even Todd's imagination couldn't invent.

He had been so patently unlike Todd. He was open and playful, a dreamer chained to reality. He had the confident short-sightedness of an only child born for the spotlight, while Todd was raised in the shadows of his older brother's achievements. Neil could recite another's words and inject new emotion that threatened to flood the soul, and Todd had wanted so badly to get swept up by him.

There had never been anyone like Neil—not for Todd. In his own heart, there lived a poet, Todd knew this now, but Neil had been the first person to make him  _believe_ it. He could still remember the misty-eyed awe shimmering in his eyes that day in Mr. Keating's class. He was never convinced that he'd deserved it, but every day, he lived as though someday he might earn it.

The men at Welton always spoke of Neil in euphemistic cautionary tones. He was a  _tragedy_ , he was  _troubled_. They never knew him the way the Dead Poets knew him, the way Todd knew him. Not as a troubled and tragic example of where defying their precious Four Pillars led you. Neil had been full of life and intensity in a way those men—indeed most men—never would be. Neil had shone brighter than the sun, and for those too-short days, he had made sure Todd felt his warmth.

Neil was never a poet in his own right, but after hearing Todd's words in that class, he never let him forget what he felt in his heart—that Todd would come to create great things. That Todd was so full of feeling, just like him, that they might each choke on it.

Every word that Todd wrote, he heart in the echo of Neil's voice. He wrote everything for him—for the memory of him and his boisterous cries of  _carpe diem_ and that awestruck look that Todd couldn't bear to let himself forget. That look which he reminded himself could never be an act, no matter how good Neil was, even when so much of himself had been. Never for Todd.

Sometimes he entertained his selfish dream that he was the only one who Neil revealed himself for, but he knew that wasn't true. It was the club, the Dead Poets Society. Young men caught in solidarity within an ocean of dreams. Boys whose parents' ambitions were the riptides that threatened to pull them under.

It wasn't fair, Todd thought, that someone like him, always unassuming, so easily lost in the crowd, should be allowed a lifetime of dreams when Neil, so sure, so bright, was given one night to live his.

Somehow, through it all, Neil had latched onto Todd and loaned him his incredible faith in himself. For years, he'd wondered what he could have given Neil to deserve such a gift. But now, as he signed his name beneath his printed words, he knew.

  _These words, as all my words before, are for Neil._


End file.
